May 13, 2020

1007 East 53rd Street 773-582-1500 View virtual walk-throughs of all our terrific properties at www.melioraregroup.com

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1364 E 49th Street

Stately home across from Kenwood Park, five bedrooms, 3 full and one half bath. Beautiful designer kitchen, updated baths, central air on 2nd and 3rd floor, bright and airy, lovely layout. New roof, new windows, newer mechanicals. Move right in. Please visit our virtual open house on Saturday 1-3. Text or call 7738186318 for face time, or book zoom through mgerbaulet@melioraregroup.com $995,000.

1224 E 57th Street

Campus cottage in mint condition. 4 bedrooms, 3 updated baths, newer kitchen with concrete counters and reclaimed wood shelving, partially finished basement, lovely secluded back yard, many new windows and upgrades throughout. $925,000.

Madelaine Gerbaulet-Vanasse

4701 S Woodlawn, house D

Extremely well maintained Kennicott Place free standing home.Three bedrooms (fourth bedroom has been turned in to a walk in closet), 2 and one half bath. Wonderful updated eat in kitchen opening to great back yard. Family room with fireplace, living room with porch and parking for 2 cars.$525,000.

Amy Gelman

5301 S Greenwood

Corner home steps from campus and all the shops and restaurants on 53rd Street. Five plus bedrooms (one on the first floor), 3 full and one half bath. Living room with fireplace and sun porch, formal dining room. Home has newer mechanicals and windows, just freshly painted. Beautiful garden oasis and rented coach house. $1,175,000.

Madelaine Gerbaulet-Vanasse

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5216 S Dorchester #3

5321 S Woodlawn #3

Top floor, totally redone 3 bedroom, 2 bath condo with stunning kitchen, central air, laundry in unit. Large private deck and common back yard makes this a perfect home in the heart of Hyde Park. $ 379,000.

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Mary-Ellen Holt

Amy Gelman

5142 S King Drive #3B

Lovely 1 bedroom, 1 bath right by Washington Park.

Separate spacious living room and dining room, updated kitchen and bath, gas fireplace, in unit laundry. nice back porch. What a steal at $63,000.

Kandis Martin

11934 S Calumet

Imagine a gut rehabbed four bedroom, two bath house with new windows, new siding, central air, washer/dryer in partially finished basement, beautiful kitchen with stainless appliances and granite counter tops for $159,000.

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Contact our team:

Madelaine Gerbaulet-Vanasse 773-818-6318 mgerbaulet@melioraregroup.com

Amy Gelman 773-454-1020

4936 S Forrestville 8054 S Kimbark

Recently renovated single family home with two car garage. Main part of home has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, additional in law lower level suite features an additional bedroom and 1 bath. Price to be determined.

Kandis Martin

Sold in Three Days!

Extraordinary Bronzeville grey stone with a wealth of original details in mint condition: woodwork, fixtures, pocket doors, carved mantelpieces. Four bedrooms, two full baths, three car garage, new roof and additional side lot. $485,000.

Madelaine Gerbaulet-Vanasse

Tijana Velarde 847-630-1022

agelman@melioraregroup.com

tvelarde@melioraregroup.com

meholt@melioraregroup.com

cchatman@melioraregroup.com

kmartin@melioraregroup.com

pgerbaulet@melioraregroup,com

Mary-Ellen Holt 312-560-6566 Kandis Martin 847-687-4721

Corey Chatman 312-414-9928

Phil Gerbaulet-Vanasse 773-406-9831

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent non-profit newspaper by and for the South Side of Chicago. We provide high-quality, critical arts and public interest coverage, and equip and develop journalists, photographers, artists, and mediamakers of all backgrounds.

Volume 7, Issue 18 Editor-in-Chief Jacqueline Serrato Managing Editors Martha Bayne Sam Stecklow Senior Editors Julia Aizuss, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Emeline Posner, Adam Przybyl, Olivia Stovicek Jasmine Mithani Politics Editor Jim Daley Education Editor Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Michelle Anderson Literature Editor Davon Clark Nature Editor Sam Joyce Food & Land Editor Sarah Fineman Contributing Editors Mira Chauhan, Joshua Falk, Lucia Geng, Carly Graf, Robin Vaughan, Jocelyn Vega, Tammy Xu, Jade Yan Staff Writer

AV Benford

Data Editor Jasmine Mithani Radio Exec. Producer Erisa Apantaku Social Media Editors Grace Asiegbu, Arabella Breck, Maya Holt Director of Fact Checking: Tammy Xu Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Susan Chun, Maria Maynez, Sam Joyce, Elizabeth Winkler, Lucy Ritzmann, Kate Gallagher, Matt Moore, Malvika Jolly, Hannah Faris Visuals Editor Mell Montezuma Deputy Visuals Editors Siena Fite,

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Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com

IN CHICAGO IN THIS

ISSUE

Latinx Illinoisans surpass all groups in coronavirus cases Many Latinx residents of Illinois are essential workers and face an alarming surge in COVID-19 cases despite making up less than a fifth of the state population. Cases are concentrated in Chicago—particularly in Little Village, Archer Heights, and BelmontCragin—and Cook County, including suburban Cicero, according to data published by the Illinois Department of Public Health. Mayor Lori Lightfoot's “racial equity" rapid response teams launched a multi-lingual awareness campaign and new testing sites, and are working with local unions like SEIU Local 1, United Here Local 1, and the Laborers District Council to address case clusters in industries and facilities “with a high Latinx workforce." But President Donald Trump's simultaneous demonization of immigrants and his push to reopen the economy during the peak of the pandemic could mean a death sentence for many in this community and be disastrous for the country.

seeking clemency in a crisis

A long way to go before things go back to normal On May 8, a few days after Governor J.B. Pritzker announced his five-stage plan for reopening Illinois region by region, Mayor Lori Lightfoot followed suit with a plan of her own, built along similar public health guidelines. The city’s currently considered to be in “Phase Two” of the plan, with the stay-at-home order still widely in place and all non-essential workers working from home. To move to “Phase Three,” we’ll need to meet certain set rates of new cases of COVID-19 and a declining or stable rate of hospitalizations, ICU admittance, and deaths, and ensure that the city can test at least five percent of residents a month. If these and other epidemiological benchmarks are met, some businesses can reopen and non-essential workers may return to work—and social gatherings of less than ten people will be allowed. But though in the coming weeks six new testing sites are slated to open in Little Village, Englewood, Belmont-Cragin, Gage Park, Pullman, and at Sox Park (aka Guaranteed Rate Field), with the rate of positive test results currently hovering around twenty-six percent, Chicago does not appear to be anywhere near on track to meet these goals.

the southeast side

The mayor’s pledge with big landlords Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Housing Solidarity Pledge asks landlords and lenders to provide grace periods during the pandemic and waive late fees for rent or mortgage payments, suspend foreclosures until the end of May, and allow for written repayment plans. No tenants’ groups appear to have been consulted on the non-binding document, however; if they were, none signed on. The Hyde Park Herald reported two of Hyde Park’s largest landlords have continued to bring eviction proceedings against tenants.

TLC Management Company has filed dozens of lawsuits since Governor J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home order took effect in March—in at least eight of those cases, the company acknowledged the tenants had only failed to pay their April rent. Mac Properties filed to evict two tenants for “bad behavior.” Last week, TLC said it would withdraw a pair of lawsuits against tenants in South Shore after finding out they were in violation of the federal CARES Act, after activists brought it to public attention. TLC and Mac said they will honor the mayor’s pledge and will not file more evictions for non-payment of rent until the crisis is over. Of course, that doesn’t help the tenants who have already been sued and are in legal limbo until the courts open back up. But it is good PR for companies whose revenues haven’t really been hurt much—rent payment figures are only about 1.5 percent lower than the same time last year. If the stimulus checks and unemployment money run out, we’ll see whether the landlords’ benevolence persists.

“I've been living [in Little Village] my whole life so I'm really used to it. It's been going on for a long time.” elena bruess....................................16

Why won’t Pritzker use his clemency powers in a pandemic? gabe levine-drizin...........................4 communities that count

Undocumented and immigrant residents grapple with the 2020 Census under Trump jocelyn vega......................................8 resident activists and environmental groups advocate for more oversight for

“Adding another polluter to the neighborhood when the Calumet River is lined with them is completely wrong.” lucia whalen..................................10 painting south side houses

Excerpts from a forthcoming book by Leisa Collins sarah fineman................................12 croSSWord, trivia, and coloring page

jim daley, martha bayne, mel valentine.................................14 the smell behind the school

op-ed: bringing chicago home in a time of crisis

Housing advocates continue to push for a dedicated funding stream to address the city’s homelessness crisis bobby vanecko.................................18 moving past the festivals

SSA #42 is being challenged to reimagine what those funds could instead be used for in the future malik jackson..................................21

Cover Photo by Lloyd DeGrane MAY 13, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

JUSTICE

Seeking Clemency in a Crisis

Advocates argue that Illinois could be doing much more to protect the incarcerated from the pandemic, but many politicians fear backlash

BY GABE LEVINE-DRIZIN

S

ince the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Illinois’ correctional facilities, like many across the country, have been devastated by the outbreak. While it has recently been superseded by two devastating outbreaks of more than 1,500 cases, each racking Ohio prisons, Illinois’ correctional facilities were for weeks home to two of the most prominent single-site outbreaks: one linked to the Cook County Jail (sitting at number six and, as of press time, responsible for 987 cases), and another linked to the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet (sitting at number forty-three with 225 cases), where there have been at least eleven coronavirus related deaths.

In response to the outbreak, activists and lawmakers have demanded bold action to both relieve the suffering of those locked inside and to speed up the process of departure for those whose sentences are ending soon. It is nearly impossible to practice social distancing within a prison; there is often a lack of critical personal protective equipment, sick people are housed near others, and there is a high concentration of the medically vulnerable and elderly. Two weeks ago, a federal judge ordered the implementation of strict social distancing measures inside Cook County Jail, a move that has been pushed by many activists and covered extensively in the media. But the crisis in the state’s prison system, which houses more than 38,000 prisoners, has yet to be met with meaningful forms of relief.

Though it is a just, moral, and even legal obligation to prevent widespread death in prisons where no social distancing can occur, the necessity goes beyond that: prisons are incredibly porous places that are embedded in the communities that surround them.

More than 8,600 correctional officers move back and forth between prisons and the wider community a day; this is to say 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 13, 2020

nothing of the scores of other workers like medical workers and food vendors who do the same. If the severity of the outbreak within Illinois prisons is known and the need to address it is agreed upon, then what has gotten in the way of drastic action?

A

s early as March 12, activists called on Pritzker to release elderly prisoners from state prisons in anticipation of a wider outbreak. After the first registered death in an Illinois prison on March 30, activists turned to litigation to address the crisis. Three cases seeking to compel Governor J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) to speed up the release of prisoners using mechanisms already available within state law were filed on April 2 by a consortium of local civil rights attorneys and advocates.

On April 13, a U.S. District Court judge, consolidating the two cases that had been filed in federal court, denied the request for emergency relief, essentially saying that there must be time given for IDOC to create a more effective response.

Though the request for emergency relief was denied, these two cases have yet to be ruled upon and the ball is now in the court of the civil rights organizations to either amend their argument or to push forward, said Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center (UPLC), one of the organizations behind the suits. The Illinois Supreme Court declined to take up the third case.

According to Mills, even before the outbreak occurred, past litigation had compelled the Department of Corrections to address the insufficiency of its medical care. In 2013, the UPLC filed a lawsuit against the IDOC stating that more than 50,000 prisoners were experiencing needless pain due to the inadequacy of medical care in the state’s prisons. After a federal

judge ruled in 2017 that the IDOC must systematically address these insufficiencies, a 2019 agreement imposed a court-approved monitor that would oversee a complete overhaul of how medical care is provided to the state’s prisoners. Though a team of federal monitors has pressed for compliance, the overhaul has been ongoing; if the outbreak is any indication, its implementation has been underwhelming.

Though a widespread release of prisoners has not occured at the speed that UPLC and its partners are arguing is necessary, Pritzker has taken some slight steps towards addressing the crisis. In late March, Pritzker signed an executive order which stopped the transfer of inmates from county jails to state prisons, something for which he was criticized by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association, and later, the Sun-Times editorial board. He also signed an order which gives IDOC permission to allow “medically vulnerable” inmates out of prison temporarily for as long as the governor’s emergency proclamation is in effect. Inmates that meet medical criteria would be granted furloughs to slow the spread of COVID-19 in prisons.

The number of prisoners released on medical furlough is woefully insufficient, however, according to Jennifer Soble, executive director of the nonprofit Illinois Prison Project, which advocates for the state’s incarcerated population and provides representation to some of its members, and is one of the organizations behind the lawsuits.

Soble and Mills put the number of prisoners granted medical furlough at around fifteen to twenty, a low number which may be a product of the IDOC’s very narrow definition of what constitutes “medically vulnerable.” And while Soble, a former federal public defender, noted that Pritzker has also taken a step to remove barriers to being released on discretionary good time by waiving a notification requirement, she said that up until now, these steps “have not resulted in any substantial number of increases or in any substantial increase in the pace of releases.” (Pritzker’s office and the IDOC did not respond to requests for comment.)

It doesn’t have to be this way, she noted.

“It would be one thing if the IDOC didn’t have the legal tools that it needed to release people who were sick or old or to restructure

“It would be one thing if the IDOC didn’t have the legal tools that it needed to restructure the prison population to allow for social distancing...That’s not the world we live in. The Illinois legislature has given the IDOC so many tools to react responsibly to this crisis.”

BY ILLINOIS PUBLIC RADIO

the prison population to allow for social distancing,” she said. “That’s not the world we live in. The Illinois legislature has given the IDOC so many tools to react responsibly to this crisis.”

Looking to help speed along the process, the Project, in conjunction with Restore Justice, which advocates for those who were incarcerated as youth, released a concrete list of actions that the governor and the IDOC could take today that would, in their words, “decrease demand on health systems and protect both inmates and communities.” The recommendations call on the governor to immediately grant pending commutation petitions that seek release based on terminal illness; encourage IDOC to release elderly people with less than a year to serve, and people serving some classes of felonies who are vulnerable to serious illness or death due to the virus; and, among other things, commute the sentences of anyone over the age of sixty with less than five years

remaining to time served.

I

llinois governors have wide, unchecked clemency powers at their disposal— most famously exemplified by former Governor George Ryan, a Republican who in 2003, with merely forty-eight hours left in his term, commuted the death sentences of more than 160 inmates. While Illinois has a Prisoner Review Board which, among other tasks, makes recommendations as to whether or not certain prisoners should be granted clemency, Pritzker can both grant clemency without a hearing and ignore the advice of the board as he wishes.

Activists and attorneys have also implored Pritzker to use his powers of clemency, as pardons, commutations, amnesties, and reprieves are the most effective way of getting large numbers of people out of prisons as quickly as possible.

He has used these tools to a certain degree, commuting the sentences of

seventeen prisoners since March 11. In some states in which governors are vested with the same clemency powers as Illinois, governors have used their clemency powers more widely to expedite the release of prisoners from crowded prisons. In Washington, Governor Jay Inslee has commuted the sentences of 293 prisoners set to be released within sixty days, and forty-one inmates have received work furloughs. In Oklahoma, Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, commuted the sentences of over 450 people.

In Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear has commuted the sentence of 186 inmates that were more susceptible to COVID-19, and released 743 more who had six months or less left on their sentence.

Commutations are not the only way to address the crisis. According to Courtney Oliva, executive director of the New York University School of Law Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, governors across the country have a wide array of

powers that they can use to address the crisis.

Oliva, a former federal and New York state prosecutor, is the coauthor of a recent report arguing for governors to stem the pandemic by using reprieves—a temporary suspension of a sentence that allows recipients to resume their sentences at a later date, and an underused tool that could help expedite the release of prisoners.

Though reprieves have historically only been used to save someone from a death sentence, according to Oliva, there is “no explicit restriction” on it being used to reduce correctional populations to limit COVID-19’s spread. Reprieves also have an added advantage: they “respond to this once-in-a lifetime pandemic and prevent people from getting sick” while taking into account “the political reality.”

Oliva did note, however, that commutations are the “most fulsome and immediate way to get people out.”

Oliva’s report also highlights furloughs MAY 13, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

JUSTICE

as a useful release mechanism to deal with the crisis. A recent analysis by Injustice Watch found that 1,056 inmates—of which only forty-nine were older than sixty— were released through a combination of furloughs, electronic monitoring, and good time credit, all of which are used at IDOC’s discretion. Oliva was quick to praise the governor’s executive order granting IDOC permission to expand medical furloughs, noting especially that he didn’t “carve out those who committed violent crimes” from eligibility, something which often hampers other attempts at reform. But Jobi Cates, the executive director of Restore Justice, told Injustice Watch that the number is not nearly enough. “They could put thousands of people on home detention tomorrow,” said Soble. “There is nothing that is stopping them, except them.”

P

ritzker’s reluctance to use his clemency powers is not unique to Illinois— governors across the country have pardoned less and less frequently, and are often met with political backlash.

After learning about some of the governor’s commutations through the media, eight Illinois Senate Republicans and twenty-two House Republicans wrote letters to him asking, among other things, for clearer communication, an elaboration of the criteria upon which these prisoners are deemed releasable, and a clarification as to whether or not these commutations had anything to do with the virus itself. (Pritzker retains the sole authority on clemency, and has no legal responsibility to explain his decisions to legislators of either party, or anyone at all.)

Nevertheless, Springfield-area Republican Senator Steven McClure, who cosigned the letter, told me that he and his colleagues “were not saying that all commutations were bad.” In fact, he echoed Soble in some regards, saying, “The way that this has been handled by DOC is not very good.”

Though Illinois Republicans have singled out the governor’s lack of “transparency,” it is clear that the majority of the backlash has stemmed from the nature of the commutations—namely, that some involve those convicted of violent crimes.

The case of Alma Durr, a south suburban woman who in 1999 was convicted of killing her twenty-one-month-old son after using crack cocaine, has been the focus of Republican ire. The letter specifically mentions this case and notes in detail how 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 13, 2020

her son Darryl “moaned and suffered but did not die for another two hours.” The letter also noted that Durr, who had been sentenced to life, was leaving a prison that, according to the IDOC website, at the time had no COVID-19 infections.

“You have to draw the line when you have child murderers,” said McClure, who served as a prosecutor in Sangamon County before taking office last year.

According to an interview with Rockford-area Representative John Cabello, who signed the House letter, Pritzker said at first that he would commute only those who were elderly and susceptible to COVID-19.

Cabello has released data from a list of 761 released inmates he obtained from Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey that he claims counters the governor’s promise, noting that he had found “at least three” murderers that didn’t fit that criteria in the list. Though the accuracy of the list of 761 inmates itself was confirmed by IDOC, its spokesperson said it included many who had been released for reasons unrelated to the pandemic.

Downey claimed to The Center Square, a news website founded last year with ties to right-wing groups, that he found the list on the IDOC website. Neither Center Square nor the Weekly could locate the list on the IDOC website.

Cabello, who served over twenty years as a police officer and still works as a parttime detective for the Rockford Police Department when the legislature is not in session, said that he was open to working with Pritzker to release low-level nonviolent offenders but that he should “stop releasing murderers” and those that had been convicted of other violent offenses.

Cabello also told the Weekly that he wrote a letter to the governor and filed a public records request to find out whether those released had been so due to the coronavirus or not. He said that the governor has not responded and that his request was denied.

In the days after he spoke to the Weekly, House Republicans got an answer in the form of a letter written by IDOC Acting Director Rob Jeffreys addressed to Jim Durkin, leader of the state House Republicans. The letter explained, among other things, that the IDOC “has not changed policies” in determining which offenders are appropriate for release and that the list of all those released was already available publically online.

As far as the more high-profile seventeen commutations that the governor

has granted, the charge that they were done “quietly,” as described by the Tribune, is not correct. In the case of these commutations, according to Jason Sweat, the chief legal counsel for the Illinois Prisoner Review Board, normal procedure as far as notifying victims and families was followed. Pritzker spokesperson Jordan Abudayyeh did not respond to Weekly requests for comment, but told the Capitol Fax blog, “There is a clear process that has been used for decades when governors exercise their clemency powers.…

The Governor is a strong believer in criminal justice reform and that means carefully and thoughtfully considering petitions for clemency from those who have demonstrated a commitment to rehabilitation while serving their sentence. The Governor takes the PRB’s recommendations to heart as he weighs these decisions.” In addition, many of these commutations, like the case of Marilyn Mulero, were granted to inmates whose clemency hearings had been attended publically and were extensively covered in the media.

By not commenting specifically on whether these commutations are related to COVID-19, however, the governor has opened a window of uncertainty which Republican lawmakers have been able to exploit. While other states’ governors have explicitly linked recent commutations to the COVID outbreak, Pritzker has not responded to questions as to whether recent commutations were COVID related.

According to Soble, the clemency system is an area in need of reform: “we are seeing the byproduct of a system that wasn’t working very efficiently before COVID and the governor is playing catch-up.” She highlighted how many of the commutations granted “should have occurred under any circumstance.”

The sparse and halting use of the governor’s clemency powers, and the widespread criticism of its use, even during a global pandemic, exposes how the ideologies justifying mass incarceration put incarcerated people at disproportionate amounts of risk during crises. As the outbreak of COVID-19 has forced politicians to consider more radical solutions to address underlying issues in the economy and healthcare system, a more robust use of clemency powers during a pandemic could forge a new precedent for prison and criminal justice reform after the outbreak.

I

n 1978, as part of a larger nationwide movement towards tough-on-crime solutions, Illinois abolished discretionary parole for those sentenced after February 1 of the same year, replacing the system with mandatory supervised release (MSR). While MSR is a parole-like system of supervision that applies to those convicted of certain offenses, it comes into effect only after the full completion of a sentence—functioning as an additional penalty for serious crimes, never as a way to release prisoners early in order to encourage rehabilitation. The abolition of discretionary parole is a factor in explaining the subsequent skyrocketing of Illinois’ prison population.

Pritzker and IDOC’s ability to release large amounts of the prison population early in a safe way in the absence of any widespread discretionary parole system has severely hampered his ability to navigate the crisis. Illinois is one of sixteen states, plus Washington, D.C., that does not have any way for incarcerated people to earn parole.

Illinois does retain discretionary parole for those sentenced before February 1st, 1978, and a bill that Pritzker signed into law in April 2019 now allows for inmates who committed certain crimes before they were twenty-one to also petition the Prisoner Review Board for parole after serving ten years. However, the roughly 120 elderly prisoners that qualify for discretionary parole are by no means guaranteed the majority vote of the Prisoner Review Board that they need in order to gain parole, and the fifteen-member board votes against granting parole in the vast majority of cases. Ultimately, that means that in Illinois, according to Soble, “there is no established system for people who pose no threat to public safety whatsoever to go home before the expiration of their sentence—no matter how long that sentence is.”

Other states have taken advantage of their discretionary parole systems to more effectively handle the outbreak in their prisons.

In Michigan, for example, the number of people being paroled from state prisons has increased by around 1,000 per month, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a national research and advocacy nonprofit.

Some states that don’t have discretionary parole systems, however, have still been more effective in dealing with the COVID outbreak in prisons. On March 31, California Governor Gavin Newsom approved the early release of up to 3,500 inmates to slow the spread of the virus

by accelerating the release dates for nonviolent offenders due to be released within sixty days. In Washington, more than 1,150 inmates are set to be released as a result of an order from the state Supreme Court.

McClure agreed that the way the criminal justice system is structured has also made it hard to adequately respond to the pandemic: “The options shouldn’t be a. you live in a place that is unsafe because of the widespread infection rates here, or b. you go home and you’re free. Those should not be the two options.”

Prior to the outbreak, several Democratic lawmakers put forth legislation that would seek to expand parole in some way, be it to those who have terminal illness, as Northwest Side state Representative Will Guzzardi proposed in January, or to those who have served a certain percentage of their sentence, as state Senators Celina Villanueva, from the Southwest Side, and Kimberly Lightford, from the west suburbs, have proposed in separate bills.

While past attempts have failed, Soble, who worked on crafting Guzzardi’s bill, is “optimistic that it will pass at some point.”

In an interview, Villanueva recognized that it could be years until the legislation

passes; her and Guzzardi’s bills both have just one cosponsor each—Senator Robert Peters and Representative Kam Buckner, respectively—and Lightford’s has none. Pointing to how ten years ago “cannabis legalization was unfathomable,” she emphasized that big shifts in public consciousness can happen.

And to Villanueva, it’s not only about what we do now to address the pandemic, it’s also about what we do after the virus has run its course. Parole is a necessary fix, according to Villanueva, because after the outbreak, many more people will be in desperate situations, impoverished, and suffer from worse mental health outcomes.

“Times of desperation lead to desperate choices and criminalizing everybody will not be the answer,” she said. Disclosure: the author’s father sits on the board of the Illinois Prison Project. He had no role in the reporting of this story.

Gabe Levine-Drizin is a contributor to the Weekly. He last covered the unsuccessful efforts of three challengers to oust U.S. Representative Bobby Rush from his long-held seat.

Your parcipaon matters.

Questions about the 2020 Census?

We have answers. Text us your questions to 987987.

Complete your Census form online: my2020Census.gov

MAY 13, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLITICS

Communities That Count

Undocumented and immigrant residents grapple with the 2020 Census under Trump

BY JOCELYN VEGA

D

uring a two-hour drive through residential blocks in La Villita on April 1, a string of cars beeped and passengers cheered from their side windows as they rolled from Cicero Avenue to 26th and California. Volunteers and staff from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), Enlace Chicago, and Taller de Jose organized the event to increase awareness of the 2020 Census and motivate community members to increase La Villita’s census self-response rates.

Mateo Uribe Ríos from ICIRR explained that the caravan was “how we get the word out” as a result of COVID-19 social distancing measures. “I want folks to take the census because there's more that we gain, and there's a lot to lose if we don’t,” he said.

Uribe Ríos is a census coordinator for ICIRR, where he works with sixty-three organizations to mobilize census efforts within immigrant communities across Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

He supports partnerships between many community organizations, including United African Organization, Arab American Family Services, Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community, and Centro de Trabajadores Unidos. He coordinates community efforts to get out the count, while acknowledging the barriers that make those communities hard to count in the first place.

In some ways, working as a census coordinator is an unlikely step for Uribe Ríos. When he was younger, he learned of his undocumented status during sophomore year of high school and therefore didn’t want to be involved with civic engagement.

“I always stayed away from getting involved when I was younger, because I didn't see a point,” Uribe Ríos said. “I just didn’t see how I [could] get involved. I couldn’t vote.

When I turned eighteen, I knew I could not. I thought that I couldn’t go to a public university. I thought these things were 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 13, 2020

distant from me, and [that] made me feel more separate from the country...It’s always feeling like [having] one foot in the door and the other one out.”

Growing up in Berwyn, Uribe Ríos said “my barriers as a person who was new to America and U.S. culture” were compounded by denial of opportunities and colorism at a failing school district that deteriorated his confidence. Transferring school districts to Riverside opened his eyes to the uneven resources that different communities received and the possibilities that civic engagement could still bring. “I simply had to move to the other side of Harlem Avenue in order for my life to change completely,” Uribe Ríos said.

“These folks are not hard-to-count on purpose.”

As he got older, Uribe Ríos witnessed undocumented youth events and political mobilization in favor of immigration reform. “I remember watching C-SPAN and Univision and looking at those votes for the DREAM Act, having high hopes but then seeing it fail. And so for me, I wanted to do something,” Uribe Ríos said.

In 2010, he witnessed one of the very first undocumented youth rallies, where youth came out as “undocumented, unafraid, and unapologetic.” The timing of this youthled rally also coincided with the last census.

“I didn’t know what was at stake,” Uribe Ríos said, “but I know now that the census means something. It means that my presence is being known.”

With shelter-in-place in effect ICIRR’s partner organizations have decided to hold off on door knocking, but they are still finding ways to inform communities, such as dropping off literature. On June 1, ICIRR

will be hosting an immigrants and refugee census day. “I’ve been letting our partners know that we can still do the work, but we got to take care of ourselves if we want to advocate for our community,” Uribe Ríos said.

Despite community efforts, these same communities are often labelled “hardto-count.” This term refers to historically low response rates, as well as difficulty in increasing participation through outreach efforts. Many hard-to-count communities have populations that are under four years old, living in poverty, racial minorities, unhoused, renters, densely populated, or living in informal settlements. As a result of being under-counted, communities risk losing funding allocations, political representation, and community resources.

However, labelling communities as hard-to-count carries implications that often do not reflect the communities’ experiences. Census terminology frames these communities as the difficult party, instead of recognizing oppression that has been experienced by those communities and continues to exist. “These folks are not hard-to-count on purpose,” Uribe Ríos said. “These are populations that have been historically marginalized by the government, so they are persuaded to not take the census.”

He described how historical and current inequalities can influence an individual’s perception when encountering the census, how it’s an entire, deliberate process of weighing risks and past experiences. “We’re talking [about the] large scheme of things, systemic oppression,” Uribe Ríos said.

“Folks within the undocumented community have reasons for not trusting the government with this information,” he said. “This information has been used wrongfully...This information was used to track Japanese Americans and Japaneseborn folks during the times of the internment camps of the 1940s.” Since then, under Title 13 of the U.S. code, census data has protected

personal, identifiable information. However, communities fear history repeating itself in light of current anti-immigrant practices.

“Undocumented folks like us have to maintain a certain level of distance from the government, and then the census is inviting us back for the count,” Uribe Ríos said.

A recent example is the proposed citizenship question that was barred from the 2020 Census. Lingering confusion over whether the question would appear, as well as fears regarding how personal and household data might be utilized in the future, creates a mistrust of the government.

Heightened policing in immigrant communities with ICE surveillance, raids, deportations, and emerging detention centers for undocumented children has further exacerbated those tensions.

Uribe Ríos said that it shouldn’t be up to undocumented communities themselves to overcome concerns regarding misused information that has targeted them.

“The government is [asking for] this step forward—but [the government] won't step forward for you. And it’s not fair,” Uribe Ríos said.

“The government is not civically engaging us. Our educational system is not engaged with us. Our workplaces, our healthcare, our cultural understanding of immigrants, is not getting engaged with us.

We’re not fully included into all of these systems.” Uribe Ríos said that this lack of inclusion can “prevent communities from seeing the census to the full extent of its effect on our communities.”

He pointed to the contradiction between the census outreach promotion of benefits while, “at the same time, the government is also doing things that discourages us from receiving those benefits the other nine years of the decade,” such as lack of equitable school investment, trouble maintaining community infrastructure, and the persistent need for social services.

“When it comes to this relationship

between our communities, where are the mandates? For the Black community, where are the reparations? For the indigenous community, what are you doing to repair that relationship? For other folks of color, what are you doing to create additional opportunities,” Uribe Ríos asked. Rather than labeling communities as hard-tocount, it is better to recognize systemic oppression and work towards accountability.

“It’s one thing to just say ‘one person equals X amount of dollars’ for this community. It is another thing to be intentional in saying ‘this community, we know, has been facing issues from the system that has existed in this country. We need to do more,” Uribe Ríos said. Without a historical lens, listing census benefits alone does not fully ground present community needs.

As a census organizer, Uribe Ríos said his role is to educate people by having discussions about the census that take these nuances, tensions, and factors into account. He validates individual fears when completing the census in community events, which have recently been held virtually. “It’s difficult. It’s difficult because I agree with my job. I want folks to be counted, and I want folks to get the opportunity to make that decision for themselves. [But] I also wish that these barriers, which are constructs, didn’t exist,” he said.

Uribe Ríos recognizes that communities have been advocating for themselves in many other ways, and that the census isn’t the only way to do so. He said that these communities “have built within themselves their own safety networks, their own social networks,” but that more resources are needed to sustain their growth and structures.

For Uribe Ríos, his work promoting civic engagement not only helps with census efforts but also serves to support immigrant communities in gaining more visibility.

He said that with census participation, communities can not only support proper determination of resource allocation, but also political redistricting at the state and federal level, despite an individual’s inability to vote.

Uribe Ríos thinks that for undocumented communities, completing

BY VALERIE VON RUBIO

the census should be a two-way street. “[It] means that I count. That means you should be also providing the services that my community needs, because I'm a member of this community...I’m making a statement here that, yes, this is where I decided to make my home and my family.” ¬

SPOILER ALERT! SSW GAME KEYS croSSWord Key!

The Weekly’s reporting on the 2020 Census is supported by a grant from the McCormick Foundation, administered by the Chicago Independent Media Alliance Jocelyn Vega is a contributing editor to the Weekly. She last wrote about an artist talk at the National Public Housing Museum.

MAY 13, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

Resident activists and environmental groups advocate for more oversight for the Southeast Side

BY LUCIA WHALEN

COURTESY OF NRDC

P

lans have been afoot for months for scrap metal recycler General Iron to move its operations from Lincoln Park to Hegewisch in 2021. But while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has scheduled a required virtual public comment period that will take place in two sessions on May 14, Far Southeast Side residents say the hearing—and the move—should be put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic and, more broadly, to General Iron’s long-standing history of air quality violations and environmental pollution, which residents say will place a disproportionate burden on the low-income community.

At one point the largest steel manufacturing region in the world, the Southeast Side is now one of the most heavily polluted areas in the city. High wages attracted immigrants to work at the steel mills in the late 1800s, and the area enjoyed the benefits of a booming steel business well into the twentieth century. Once the steel mills began to close in the 1980s, though, thousands of residents lost their jobs, leaving the area economically decimated. And while the steel mills closed decades ago, they left behind heavy concentrations of lead and manganese, among other pollutants, in the air and ground.

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 13, 2020

Today, Southeast Side residents, many of whom are descendants of former steelworkers, carry the weight of the environmental degradation and public health consequences of the industry; the area contains some of the highest concentrations of both air pollution and asthma in the city.

Gina Ramirez works as the Midwest outreach manager for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has partnered with grassroots organizations on the Southeast Side working to prevent General Iron’s move. According to Ramirez, there should be a moratorium on the virtual public comment period and any continued plans to move General Iron to the Far Southeast Side, as the pandemic has added new barriers to the community’s involvement in the decision.

“People are trying to put food on the table. There are a lot of essential workers out here. There are a lot of people who don't have internet access. It's a really low-income community, so, you know, to have a public comment period and to organize people is just really, really hard and really frustrating,” Ramirez explained.

The proposed new location for General Iron’s facilities is near 116th Street and Burley Avenue along the Calumet River, only one mile away from George

Washington High School. If environmental violations continue, one major concern is whether students will experience negative health effects from air pollution. In Little Village—which is currently recovering from a reckless demolition in the midst of the pandemic—students from Little Village Lawndale High School have been in an ongoing fight against the manufacturing facility BWAY, as students are often unable to hold sports practices outside due to the high levels of pollution nearby.

General Iron’s present attempt is not the first time a North Side industry has relocated south. A. Finkl and Sons Steel, which was ranked as the worst polluter in Chicago by a 2005 EPA study and was for years General Iron’s neighbor, moved in 2010 from predominantly white Lincoln Park to a predominantly Black neighborhood at East 93rd Street.

In Chicago, the majority of heavy industry, and thus pollution, is on the South Side. Among the NRDC’s top priorities is holding polluters accountable for ethical practice and following EPA guidelines, while lobbying to change city zoning and land-use laws to make the locations of industrial facilities more equitable. “They shouldn't all just be in these low-income communities of color,” Ramirez explained,

adding, “Public health should be at the forefront of these decisions.”

General Iron’s move is in part the result of strong advocacy from Lincoln Park residents and Aldermen Brian Hopkins (2nd Ward) and Michelle Smith (43rd), who repeatedly reported poor air quality, metallic smells, and noise concerns and lobbied for the city to shut down or move the business.

Groups like Clean the North Branch have used Facebook as a tool to organize against General Iron, which has received multiple EPA probes and in the last year alone was cited by both the Chicago Department of Public Health and the Illinois EPA for violating the Clean Air Act. More recently, North Side residents advocating for the removal of General Iron voiced concerns that particulate matter air pollution from the facility would make nearby residents more vulnerable to COVID-19.

The relocation effort was also supported by the city Department of Planning and Development’s (DPD) Industrial Corridor Modernization Initiative, which intends “to unleash the potential of select industrial areas for advanced manufacturing and technology-oriented jobs while reinforcing industrial areas.”

The initiative involves plans to revitalize areas along the Chicago River and industrial

ENVIRONMENT

Lucia Whalen is a freelance journalist focused on issues related to health, science and the environment. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism and co-founder of Trashy Magazine. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

COURTESY OF NRDC

SPOILER ALERT! SSW GAME KEYS South Side Parks and Beaches Answers!

1) Palmisano Park 2) The ore walls at Steelworkers Park.

3) Wolf Lake 4) The Englewood Line Nature Trail 5) Auburn Park 6) 49th Street Beach 7) Sherman Park 8) Ping Tom Park 9) Marquette Park 10) Rainbow Beach

EPA in 2018 found that “no emissions... from shredding operations violated any permitted levels.” Smith also stated that General Iron “is doing more to protect the environment and public health than any other metal shredding facility in the city or area.”

While General Iron installed Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers (RTO) in 2019 in response to the air quality violation notice from the EPA in 2019, a report from a city health inspector in December of last year noted that the new equipment was failing to control noxious emissions and “fluff,” or fugitive dust, coming from the facility.

Olga Bautista, a cofounder of the Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke, which organized the grassroots effort to eliminate toxic petcoke from the community, said that General Iron’s continued noncompliance and threats to public health at its current location will continue if moved to the Southeast Side.

Both Bautista and Ramirez call for increased transparency and community input when it comes to decisions that impact land use and public health. A digital petition is currently circulating, urging Governor J.B. Pritzker, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and the EPA to stop General Iron’s move. Support has already come from U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, who sent a letter to the EPA on April 21 advocating for the agency to mandate that metal facilities on the Far Southeast Side install toxic-metal and air pollutant monitors and to investigate the facility’s unpermitted operations.

Though Bautista readily acknowledged that the current location of General Iron poses a danger to its surrounding community, she cautioned against the view that relocating the facility to the Southeast Side would solve any environmental concerns.

As she put it, “Moving this business from a white, wealthy community to a low-income minority community is only going to enrich the North Side community and its residents.

And that's going to happen at the expense of the basic quality of life for the residents of the Southeast Side.” ¬

South Side Scramble Answers!

Tint Bean House Obama Cermak Jordan Tamale Midway Dusable Antique Final Word: Quarantine

corridors in Ravenswood, Little Village, and elsewhere. Its modernization efforts have already begun on the North Branch of the Chicago River, home to the wealthiest and least pollution-burdened community in the plan, and have helped contribute to the development of upscale apartment complexes that replace former industrial areas. General Iron’s current 1909 North Clifton address is located along the North Branch riverfront adjacent to Sterling Bay’s planned Lincoln Yards development at the former Finkl site.

However, DPD’s modernization initiative leaves out the Southeast Side, home to the city’s largest industrial corridor.

And the proposed relocation of General Iron will only bring more industry into an area already struggling, in the middle of a pandemic.

“The historical burdens of pollution have really just increased vulnerability to COVID-19. We have really high asthma rates here in the neighborhood...My mother has asthma. People have a lot of autoimmune diseases. We have really high cancer rates. So adding another polluter to the neighborhood when the Calumet River is lined with them is completely wrong,” Ramirez said.

Residents of the Southeast Side have been in a seemingly never-ending fight against polluting industry interests for years. Grassroots efforts in Calumet led to regulations for open petcoke piles at the KCBX terminal when high concentrations of the neurotoxin manganese were found in the neighborhood. Last year, in neighboring Burns Harbor, Indiana, Arcelormittal’s steel mill dumped toxic levels of cyanide and ammonia into the East Arm of the Calumet River, which flows into Lake Michigan. The spill killed more than 3,000 fish.

In a letter from the CEO of Reserve Management Group to city assistant health commissioner David Graham on March 24, 2020, Joseph Smith stated that individuals on social media have led a misleading campaign to shut down the facility in the lieu of the COVID-19 crisis, saying that General Iron is an essential business and that the “City’s Department of Streets and Sanitation would find it difficult, at best, to meet the burden of handling thousands of additional tons of household appliances and items discarded in alleys.”

The letter included information on volatile organic material (VOM) testing results from November of 2018 and stated that air emissions testing provided by the

MAY 13, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

VISUAL ARTS

Painting South Side Houses Excerpts from a forthcoming book

by Leisa Collins

BY SARAH FINEMAN

T

hose paying special attention in Kenwood and Beverly last summer may have noticed a woman driving around very slowly with the windows down, hopping out every so often to photograph a certain house from all angles before standing in front of it and opening a notebook to draw. The sketcher was Leisa Collins, an architectural artist who has painted homes and historic buildings in every state and recently brought her talents and attention to Chicago. Collins, who hails from New Zealand but has in-laws in Michigan, has long hoped to paint houses around the city, which she says she loves for the history and character of its out-of-downtown residences. From Frank Lloyd Wrights to bungalows, her paintings showcase local home architecture and pay compliment to

homeowners dedicated to maintaining and preserving the historic buildings in which they live. After a painting is completed, Collins mails off a print to the residents themselves, who are often surprised to learn that their house has been part of her country-wide project. Later this year, Collins will release a coffee table book of paintings featuring hundreds of homes; stay tuned for the architectural tour of America it will offer. ÂŹ This article was originally published on our website on April 7 Sarah Fineman is the Food & Land editor of the Weekly. She last wrote about holiday baked goods from around the South Side for our 2019 Holiday Issue.

Classic Tudor in Beverly, South Bell Avenue near West 95th Street 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

ÂŹ MAY 13, 2020

Queen Ann Home in Kenwood, South Kimbark Avenue near East 47th Street

Frank Lloyd Wright Home in Beverly, South Hoyne Avenue near West 105th Street

Mid-Century Modern in Beverly, South Hoyne Avenue near West 105th Street

Bungalow in Beverly, S. Damen Ave near 99th St

Colonial Revival in Beverly, South Longwood Drive near West 99th Street

The Weekly launched a new initiative to collect stories and art a about life during the pandemic, and we want to hear from you.

Read a poem, share a story about your work, or just let us know how you’re doing.

GAMES

croSSWord: "Six Championships"

BY JIM DALEY 1

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30 Feathered friend, in cutesy internet slang 32 Coordinate paired with long 33 The man, or the shoe 37 Peter Parker feels danger with spider-_____ 39 Moisturizing butter 40 A duck might do this with a nest full of eggs 42 They're between Fris and Suns 43 On _____ firma 45 Bulls' 1993 championship run 47 KRS-ONE: "___ is something you do; hip-hop is something you live" 48 Destroy, as a building 50 British actor McKellan 51 Fashion designer Giorgio 53 Plush footwear company 54 In NFL o-lines, they're next to WRs 57 Bulls mascot

61 Low-carb, high-fat diet 64 Business end of a baby bottle 65 Frank Lloyd Wright house in Hyde Park 66 Basic unit of matter 67 Exchange of goods for money, perhaps at a discount 68 Remove from a chalkboard 69 Young sheep 70 To smell (Spanish) 71 Seated again?

DOWN 1 Newspaper death notices, for short 2 17th-century Japanese poet 3 You might bowl in one 4 Breakfast, lunch, or dinner 5 1980s Chicago house producer of "Land of Confusion" 6 Flighty pub game 7 Filled with wonder

South Side Scramble!

AVAILABLE WHERE BOOKS ARE SOLD

27

42

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ACROSS 1 44th POTUS 6 Not dry, but not soaking wet 10 Single appetizer, in Spain 14 Hay organizer 15 Off base? (abbrev) 16 Track 3 from Kendrick Lamar's album "Damn," on repeat?

17 Religion founded in Mecca and Medina 18 Nigerian rapper featured on 1-Across's 2019 summer playlist 19 Mike and Scottie's coach 20 2020 documentary about the Bulls' championship runs 23 Non-dairy milk source 24 Super Mario Brothers game console (abbrev) 25 Neighborhood ______ Gresham 29 Computing pioneer Lovelace

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by LEE BEY

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The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side

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Southern Exposure

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8 Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is displayed in NYC here 9 Two-dimensional 10 Laid-back personality 11 A throat doctor might ask you to say this 12 ___ Beta Sigma 13 Michael Albert interprets Lori Lightfoot's speeches into this (abbrev) 21 Former name of the Willis Tower 22 In his only MLB game, Jordan got two RBIs against them 26 In your forearms, these bones are next to the radii 27 Follower of Jah 28 Othello game computer program 29 Slightly open 30 You can do it in sun or water 31 "Are you __ __ out?"

33 2019 Brad Pitt spacefaring movie, with "Ad" 34 "Do You Hear What _ ____?"

35 Regarding rotational speed?

36 Scatterbrained person 38 Network airing 20-across 41 What a horse says 44 Barack's secretary of education 46 More keen 49 "Say it ____ __, Joe!" 52 Poetry slam Louder Than _ ____ 53 Complete, as in amazement 54 Bass-providing horns in a marching band 55 Enzyme-linked assay, or "Narcos" character Álvarez 56 Mix of rain and snow 58 Astronaut Armstrong 59 New Haven Ivy League school 60 Drill a hole in, or be uninspiring 61 Actor and Obama White House staffer Penn 62 When we'll get there (abbrev) 63 Hanks or Brady

GAMES

South Side Parks and Beaches Trivia!

Coloring Page Illustration by Mel Valentine

1) This Bridgeport park was until 2009 a former limestone quarry used as a landfill for construction debris.

2) What element of the former U.S. Steel South Works site has been turned into a climbing wall at this South Chicago park?

3) This body of water straddles the Illinois/ Indiana border, connecting Hegewisch and South Deering to Whiting.

4) Which rails-to-trails project, in the planning stages for more than a decade, has at its core a 1.7-mile former railway embankment acquired by the city as part of a trade to grant Norfolk Southern 84 acres for a new railyard?

5) This marshy Auburn Gresham land was developed in the late nineteenth century into an eight-acre park and lagoon that was deeded to the city of Chicago between 1911 and 1913, with the provision that it remain a park in perpetuity.

6) The 1914 wreck of the Silver Spray steamboat is still visible from what Hyde Park beach?

7) Which 60-acre New City park was named after the founder of the Union Stockyards?

8)What park along the South Branch of the Chicago River was once a Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad yard, until it was repurposed in 1998?

9) This sprawling Southwest Side park is the largest of ten parks designed by the Olmsted brothers, and once featured an 18hole golf course and a nursery with more than 90,000 trees and shrubs.

10) This South Shore beach was in 1961 the site of a “freedom wade-in” staged by an interracial coalition of civil rights activists.

Answer Key 1) croSSWord key: pg 9 2) South Side Scramble key: pg 11 3) South Side Parks and Beaches Trivia key: pg 11 MAY 13, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

ENVIRONMENT

The Smell Behind the School Industrial emissions have Little Village students and organizers worried

BY ELENA BRUESS

J

azmin Sierra noticed the smell first.

A sickly sweet, kind of plasticky odor that settled thick in the air. The sixteen-year-old had been away the whole summer, so when the fall semester started at Little Village Lawndale High School, the experience was overwhelming. It was an odor that Sierra knew all too well, a smell that often wafted from the nearby factory—a manufacturer of paint-coated containers.

After a few days back, she became resigned to it again. “I don't really differentiate the smell, unless it's a very, very strong smell, where I'm like ‘Oh my god, what is that?’” Sierra says. “I've been living [in Little Village] my whole life so I'm really used to it. It's been going on for a long time.”

Sierra is sitting in a circle of desks with several other students. Every Tuesday afternoon, the Environmental Justice Club meets in an empty science classroom on the second floor of Little Village Lawndale High School. The meetings are hosted by the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO).

On this afternoon in February, Karen Canales Salas, the education coordinator at LVEJO, calls the group to attention and begins assigning duties to the students for the coming weeks. “Sylvia, can you take care of the flyers?”

The Environmental Justice Club formed the year prior as a way for students to work on the new school garden and get involved with local environmental issues, of which there is no shortage. The high school sits smack in the middle of a Chicago industrial corridor. The remains of the Crawford coal plant, shut down in 2012, are 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 13, 2020

currently being demolished half a mile away.

Other active factories loom nearby.

The smokestacks from the one that produces the smell—BWAY Corporation— puff out clouds of emissions directly behind the high school.

Ash Martinez, an EJ Club member since its start, spoke up. “I don't live here in the community so coming here to school and breathing this kind of air, it does make your eyes open up, like ‘Oh yeah there's something going on here.’”

The group nods in agreement.

Sometimes the smell is so strong, it makes them ill. “I get migraines when I come to school,” Sylvia Meraz says, clearing her throat and speaking seriously. “I feel so physically sick sometimes.”

Just under two decades ago, Chicago Public Schools promised to build a new high school to ease urgent overcrowding in the local schools. But the plans were put on a seemingly endless monetary hold. On Mother’s Day 2001, fourteen Little Village residents staged a hunger strike demanding the school be built. Their calls for change were finally met after nineteen days.

Once the school was funded, there was a search for a spot big enough for the building. The only available location was surrounded by industry. "Little Village's land use is forty percent for industrial use," said Nancy Meza, a community organizer at LVEJO. At their main offices in Little Village, there is a stack of papers in front of her, a template for a community brochure about BWAY’s pollution to the side. Meza has been working on this issue for a while.

"Because there isn't a lot of space available here [in Little Village] for park space, for institutions, they decided that the

high school would be placed in the industrial corridor,” she continued.

The school finally opened its doors at the corner of Kostner Avenue and 31st Street in 2005. “People were really excited,” said Meza. “I don’t think there had been much thought of the consequence it would have.”

Activists campaigns like this one were not new to the community. The neighborhood has long focused on struggles for justice. For years LVEJO and the other residents had pushed for the closing of the Crawford plant right in the heart of the community, and another just five miles away in Pilsen.

According to the City of Chicago, some, if not most, of Little Village properties are within 400 feet of a truck route, and a 2018 review by the Department of Planning and Development found that 24.7 percent of businesses in Little Village are industrial, with 21.9 percent in transportation— primarily freight trucks.

Students from the high school not only breathe in the fumes from industry, but dodge semi trucks speeding past the school.

Truck traffic is expected to get much heavier as a massive warehousing facility is slated for construction on the site of the old coal plant, with a Target warehouse announced as its anchor tenant. The demolition of the plant began in April with the controversial collapse of its 100-year-old smokestack, which released a thick plume of potentially toxic dust across the neighborhood, causing its own set of pollution concerns.

Locals also fear that three blocks away from the high school, at Zapata Elementary Academy, the expansion of the Unilever mayonnaise factory will put younger children at risk and cause even more truck traffic in the community. A study conducted

by LVEJO found that 1.3 diesel trucks pass Little Village Lawndale High School every minute.

Some of those are headed for BWAY. But in the case of this company, the harsh smell is an even bigger concern to residents than the traffic.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), there are 8,067 households and 10,190 children under the age of seventeen within a one mile radius of the plant. And BWAY—recently absorbed

by Mauser Packaging Solutions—has often caught the eyes of the EPA. PHOTO BY ELENA BRUESS

ENVIRONMENT

“I've been living [in Little Village] my whole life so I'm really used to it. It's been going on for a long time.”

In September 2012, the EPA notified BWAY Corporation of violations in two major categories. First, it failed to comply with the Natural Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP).

BWAY’s thermal oxidizer, used to decompose hazardous chemicals and gases, was not operating at the appropriate temperature.

Second, the corporation failed to follow requirements of the Clean Air Act. According to the EPA, from 2010-2012, BWAY exceeded limits for volatile organic compounds—harmful toxins in the air— twelve different times. During these periods, the company also failed to monitor their emissions as continually as is required. More recently, the EPA and state have reported monitoring compliance deviations after reviews at the facility in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.

BWAY has also failed to comply with worker health and safety procedures as reported by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The company received ten complaints or referrals from 2015 to 2018. Nine were listed as involving an amputation. One case in particular had several repeat violations, specifically referencing an employee who caught a finger in the conveyor belt system.

In 2010, the company applied for renewal of its Clean Air Act permit, which companies must do every five years. While waiting for the permit to be finalized, the company operates under the expired one.

LVEJO requested a hearing when the proposed permit draft became public in 2016. According to LVEJO’s Meza, this is the only time the community had a chance for public comment or complaint. The hearing wasn’t set until November of 2019 and there has since been no response on the results.

The night of the hearing was cold and attendance was small. Residents could testify during the hearing or submit written comments to the Illinois EPA (IEPA) until the end of the month. Participants at the hearing clearly felt an overwhelming sense of frustration, along with some confusion.

Many members echoed each other with the same questions. What would the new permit do? And more importantly, what had they all been breathing in for so long?

“I mean, to be honest, the kids often don’t know what you’re talking about smellwise because they’re really used to it,” Sue Nelson, who coaches the girls’ cross country team and teaches science at the high school, said. “It takes really pointing it out. Even my runners, I’ll say, ‘Do you smell it? That’s it, that’s the smell.’”

Nelson would usually get the girls to run away from the school, in the opposite direction from BWAY, to get away from the fumes. She knew something was not right.

“A lot of girls maybe five or six years back would talk about how it would burn their chest and give them headaches,” Nelson continued. “I mean, any of those things could be that you’re getting in shape as a runner, but most of those were pretty experienced kids that I had running.”

In the summer of 2017, Nelson participated in an University of Illinois at Chicago program called the Bioengineering Experience for Science Teachers (BEST).

She took the initiative to focus on the Little Village community. With scant information about the smell coming from BWAY, Nelson wanted to study the air quality and pollution that she had been dealing with for the past fourteen years. She was determined to discover what could be causing the odor.

Nelson rented an air monitor, funded through the UIC program, to analyze the area around the high school for a week. It was hard to decipher exactly what her results meant, but according to the U.S. EPA Toxic Release Inventory, certain chemicals released

by BWAY such as glycol ethers, toluene, and ethylbenzene could cause neurological or even carcinogenic issues. The amount of chemical waste released into the air by the corporation in 2018 came to 52,579 pounds.

According to Meza, there is a lack of scientific research about what levels of these toxins are damaging and what long-term effect they could have on the community. “I tend to feel very angry that kids are exposed to stuff here. I tend to feel angry that I’ve been exposed to a lot of stuff here,” Nelson said. “I’ve gone through three pregnancies here.”

The community hopes the IEPA’s final permit for BWAY will include an odor management plan along with other various provisions such as permanent total enclosure around the four coating lines at

the factory, a monitoring system that will be reported on quarterly, and a five-year testing plan for implementing regenerative thermal oxidizers (RTO), which are meant to eliminate volatile and hazardous air pollutants. At the hearing, the IEPA board could not promise decline in odors or explain exactly what is causing the odors.

There has been no official comment from BWAY corporation concerning the new permit or the high school, and multiple attempts to contact Mauser have been ignored. But Yolanda González, a Mauser HR employee, spoke towards the end of the IEPA hearing. She said that if the hearing had happened even three years ago, none of them would have been there on behalf of BWAY. “There’s been a lot of changes in the past four years I’ve been there,” González told the IEPA panel. “I wanted to make it clear that we’re not against [the community].

We’re trying to work with them.”

She emphasized that none of the employees there that night were forced to come. They all came voluntarily because they believed in their company. “We would not be here if this was not the way we felt,” González reiterated before taking her seat.

Yet just this past year, on September 14, a large black plume of smoke was emitted from the factory during a sophomore soccer game. There was no immediate explanation provided to the community by BWAY. The school contacted LVEJO and the organization sent a photo from the incident to the IEPA, which then carried out an investigation. The exact cause of this event has not been determined, but according to the incident report from the maintenance contractor, "black lava rock like buildup" was found at the bottom of the duct close to the fan. This buildup could have been from the ceramic media that is used to heat up the contaminants.

The inspector was not sure when or if the stack, fan, or duct had ever been cleaned, but determined it was a good idea to inspect further. The EPA issued a violation notice to BWAY on October 28, specifically calling attention to the company’s violation of the visible emission standard.

Chicago environmental law attorney Keith Harley raised concerns about the fugitive emissions from the plant during

the hearing, specifically referencing this incident. He stated BWAY should be required to report all these VOC releases to the IEPA. “BWAY should be required to develop a release plan that immediately responds to fugitive VOC releases when they are detected,” Harley said during the hearing. “Including notifying the school administration so that it can adjust outdoor activities…”

Vanessa Mora is a senior at Loyola University Chicago studying environmental policy. She attended Little Village Lawndale High School and ran cross country on Nelson’s team, where she experienced burning in her chest, headaches, and nosebleeds. She attended the public hearing, and addressed the IEPA panel.

“I just feel like the state and the federal government has let us down because there’s a lot of loopholes that these companies can go through,” Mora said, thinking back to her time at school. “It wasn’t really a focus that I know of.”

The school administration and students already have a lot on their plate. When she was there, the school was focused on not losing funding. Last year, CPS schools went through the longest strike in decades after suffering cuts in funding, overcrowding, and unmet staffing demands. It ended after eleven days. And at the time of the November hearing, a shooting in the neighborhood the previous month had put the school and students on high alert.

Back at the high school, the members of the EJ Club emphasized that they wouldn’t leave their high school even if they were given the chance.

“I love my school,” Meraz said.

“I do,” the others chorused.

Nelson is hoping to get a new air monitor, one that can really read what’s going on outside. They all agreed it was a place worth fighting for.

As for Mora, she is often left with one final thought.

"I don't understand why we have these types of issues in the United States,” she said. Elena Bruess is a writer and multimedia journalist who has written for The Outline, Chicago Magazine, The Takeout, and other publications. You can find her at @ellevarela.

MAY 13, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

OPINION

Op-Ed: Bringing Chicago Home in a Time of Crisis Housing advocates continue to push for a dedicated funding stream to address the city’s homelessness crisis

BY BOBBY VANECKO

C

hicago falls far behind other major U.S. cities in its commitment to addressing homelessness. We spend only five percent of what New York City spends per person on homelessness services, and only three percent of the expenditures in Los Angeles. However, Chicago is also home to many housing advocacy organizations who are trying to shift the city’s misplaced priorities.

One such group is Bring Chicago Home, a coalition of both people directly impacted by Chicago’s housing crisis and community, policy and direct-service organizations who aim to end homelessness in the city. Its supporters include the city’s largest nonprofits working on homelessness, progressive political groups, unions, health care organizations, neighborhood groups, nonprofit developers, religious groups, and more.

Formed in 2018, the coalition has been pushing for an increase to the city’s real estate transfer tax (RETT) for high-end properties in order to generate revenue for the city to invest in affordable housing and services for people who are homeless. Bring Chicago Home’s original proposal would have increased the RETT by 1.2 percent on properties over $1 million while cutting taxes for properties under $1 million—with sixty percent of the resulting revenue allocated to addressing homelessness. Transfer taxes have already been enacted to raise revenue to mitigate the homelessness and affordable housing crises in San José and Berkeley, California, with similar bills being proposed in Boston and Oregon. In December, the Berkeley City Council passed a bill funding additional homeless services between $11 and $13.5 million through 2021, depending on how much is brought in by an increase 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 13, 2020

in its RETT, which was passed with over seventy percent of the vote in a 2018 voter referendum. The increase from 1.5 to 2.5 percent for the top third of residential and commercial real estate sales is expected to bring in $6 to $8 million per year, expressly for homeless services.

However, the coalition faced an early setback in 2019 when the City Council denied its request for a ballot referendum that would have asked voters to weigh in on its proposal, even though it was supported by a majority of aldermen. The measure was blocked by a group of aldermen led by then40th Ward Alderman Patrick O’Connor, who briefly served as then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Committee on Finance chair before he was defeated later that year by Andre Vasquez. Vasquez is part of a slate of democratic socialists who were elected to the City Council last year, running on campaign platforms that proposed major reforms to housing policy, including the Bring Chicago Home plan.

During the 2019 mayoral campaign, Mayor Lori Lightfoot also committed to introducing the coalition’s tax and using the revenue to combat homelessness—the plan was even included in the report from her transition team’s housing committee.

However, once elected, Lightfoot said that budget constraints made it too difficult to enact the Bring Chicago Home proposal.

While introducing her own plan—which proposed a RETT of .55 percent for sales under $500,000; .95 percent for sales between $500,000 and $1 million; 1.5 percent for sales of $1-3 million and 2.55 percent for sales over $10 million, estimated to raise $50 million for the 2020 budget— Lightfoot dismissed the Bring Chicago Home proposal as “never going to happen,

obviously.”

She continued, “We’re not going to be in a situation in the near-term to be able to take sixty percent”—the RETT revenue amount to be dedicated to services for people who are homeless, as proposed by Bring Chicago Home—“of a significant revenue stream off the table and devote it to any issue. There’s lots of issues that merit: homelessness, mental illness, violence reduction… We’d love to be able to fund them all at the highest possible level but the reality is, we have a budget with a huge deficit not just for this year but in the years to come and we’ve got to be realistic about managing taxpayer dollars in a responsible way.”

The coalition responded with a proposal to change the rate structure to

allow for Lightfoot’s desired changes, with a reduced percentage of funding committed to homelessness, according to Mary Tarullo, associate director of policy and strategic campaigns for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, which has been working to advocate for such a proposal since 2006.

But Lightfoot also rejected that plan, and her own RETT proposal stalled last year in the state General Assembly after nine lawmakers said they would oppose her proposal if it did not include more funding for the homeless. Lightfoot’s office did not respond to a request for comment on her current stance towards this legislation.

Bring Chicago Home is also pushing its own proposal at the state level. If the legislature passes a law authorizing the RETT increase and it is approved by PHOTO BY LLOYD DE GRANE

“I want to see action, I want to see democracy and I want to see the for their demands. resources my people need to survive.” pushing Many of the no votes on the mayor’s Governor J.B. Pritzker, a city ordinance and referendum won’t be necessary. Accordingly, in February, two progressive lawmakers— Northwest Side state Representative Delia Ramirez, and Far North Side state Senator Ram Villivalam—put forward a proposal that they worked on with the coalition.

The proposal would raise the RETT from 2.55 percent for properties worth over $10 million to 2.8 percent for properties worth between $3 and $10 million, and four percent for properties over $10 million. Of the expected revenue, the proposal would allocate $88 million to the city’s general budget, and $79 million to homelessness services and affordable housing.

The House version of the bill has twenty three cosponsors—including Michael J. Zalewski, the powerful, real estate industrybacked southwest suburban legislator who is the chair of the Revenue and Finance Committee, which the bill was assigned to in March. (He did not respond to a request for comment.) The Senate version has twelve cosponsors, and has remained in the Assignments Committee since being introduced. The proposal’s cosponsors include much of the South Side’s delegation to the legislature, including Representatives Theresa Mah, Sonya Harper, Marcus Evans Jr., Aarón Ortíz, and Justin Slaughter, and Senators Robert Peters, Celina Villanueva, Mattie Hunter, Jacqueline Collins, Emil Jones III, and Tony Muñoz.

In addition to these bills that would increase funding for homelessness, Ramirez will be introducing the COVID-19 Emergency Renter and Homeowner Protection Act, which would cancel rent and mortgage payments for 180 days for tenants impacted by the crisis, create a residential housing relief fund offering landlords relief on mortgages, property taxes and utilities, extend the ban on evictions, and amend the Illinois Human Rights Act to ban discrimination against those impacted or perceived to be impacted by COVID-19.

Peters will be introducing a similar bill in the Illinois Senate. On the federal level, U.S. Representative Jesús “Chuy” García has signed on to Representative Ilhan Omar’s bill that would cancel rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the coronavirus crisis. U.S. Representative Bobby Rush also filed a bill that would defer some mortgage payments and provide loans to landlords who waive rents during the crisis. Both

have been referred to the Committee on Financial Services.

E

ven before the current crisis, the Bring Chicago Home movement had made a compelling case and created a crucial policy proposal that would help thousands of Chicagoans. However, since the pandemic hit the city, member organizations have been focusing their energy on collaborating with state and local lawmakers on the “Right to Recovery” platform.

As part of this, United Working Families legislative director Kennedy Bartley recently worked on multiple amendments to Lightfoot’s emergency spending powers ordinance. The first amendment proposed prioritizing borrowing at low rates from the Federal Reserve instead of giving the mayor and budget director complete control over all spending under $1 million (even for funds already appropriated by the City Council). The second amendment, which is related to the $470 million of unrestricted funds that the city is set to receive from the federal government under the CARES Act, would create a mortgage relief fund, “where essentially mom and pop landlords would be able to apply for mortgage relief, thereby creating the conditions for rent cancellation,” according to Bartley.

The third amendment, which she and UWF worked on with CCH in the spirit of Bring Chicago Home, would create a homelessness fund which would support bridge housing and make hotel rooms and vacant CHA units available for Chicago’s homeless population. However, the amendments were ultimately defeated, and after a heated debate, Lightfoot’s emergency powers ordinance passed City Council by a vote of 29-21. The city has started paying for hotel rooms for some sick homeless people—but advocates are still pushing for vacant CHA units to be utilized, a much cheaper solution than hotels. Many more individual units are needed, especially given the magnitude of COVID-19 outbreaks in Chicago’s homeless shelters. Bartley said, “We are going to keep fighting, either for another amendment to the emergency powers ordinance or a standalone piece of legislation.” The emergency powers ordinance has a limited scope, and will expire June 30 unless it is renewed by City Council, so the coalition will continue organizing and

ordinance came from progressive City Council members who have endorsed the Right to Recovery policy demands, including 20th Ward Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor and 25th Ward Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez. Speaking with the Tribune about his vote, Sigcho-Lopez raised concerns that the lack of democratic input from City Council on spending decisions could lead to the Lightfoot administration entering into problematic short-sighted deals or enacting austerity measures due to plummeting tax revenue during this crisis, saying that, “In the past, the city has not had a good track record with toxic swap deals and privatizations of things like the parking meters… Ultimately, it’s our responsibility as elected officials on the council to help make sure we don’t enter into these kinds of bad deals again.” Taylor stated, “I don’t want to see memes, commercials, or people talking about what needs to be done. I want to see action, I want to see democracy and I want to see the resources my people need to survive.”

The Right to Recovery movement has several demands, including the right to housing. It asserts that in order to vindicate that right, state and local officials should place an indefinite moratorium on evictions, stop all court filings for evictions and foreclosures, and waive all rent, mortgage, and utility payments for the duration of the crisis. While Governor Pritzker has placed a moratorium on evictions, landlords are still filing cases, and rent, mortgage, and utility payments have not been waived.

As the Weekly previously reported, in order to waive those payments, Pritzker would have to lift the current statewide ban on rent control, which he has the power to do in an emergency, according to a legal memo commissioned by the KenwoodOakland Community Organization.

However, Pritzker has asserted that he does not have the legal authority to lift the ban on rent control; his office has not replied to a request for clarification. The Right to Recovery platform also demands housing for all those who are homeless and unable to shelter-in-place, and automatic lease extensions for tenants who are unable to move during the crisis.

While the members of the Bring Chicago Home coalition are currently focused on the Right to Recovery, they will continue to push for their goal of a longterm, dedicated funding stream to address

OPINION

the city’s homelessness crisis. The coalition will continue to organize support for the bills introduced by Ramirez and Villivalam, and Bartley said that they also plan on introducing more city ordinances to fulfill the goals of the Right to Recovery movement.

Ultimately, the longer-term difficulty of ending homelessness in Chicago will depend on the measures that state and local officials take now in addressing our current public health and economic crises. They could do nothing—essentially leaving the homeless for dead, and driving thousands more people into homelessness and housing insecurity when the ban on evictions is lifted—and by their inaction also significantly prolong the infection’s spread. Or they could take affirmative measures to address the reality of the crisis and support tenants, landlords, and homeowners alike. As tenants and organizers are saying in New York and nationwide, we must demand that we not return to the precoronavirus status quo where thousands of Chicagoans were homeless and thousands more were forced to live one paycheck or medical emergency away from eviction.

Even before the current crisis arose, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless estimated that there are around 86,324 homeless people in the city. Further, almost half of the city’s renters qualify as rent burdened, which means that they spend at least thirty percent of their income on rent.

Many people pay much more than thirty percent, and nationally, over 30 million of people have filed for unemployment as a result of the coronavirus. According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, even before the pandemic hit, an average of twenty percent of tenants were unable to pay their rent on time. Almost one third of America’s 13.4 million renters weren’t able to pay full rent in April, and that number was surely higher in May. Chicago’s homelessness crisis will certainly get a lot worse if policymakers do not act, or if they only enact non-binding pledges and other half measures. Bobby Vanecko is a contributor to the Weekly.

He is a second-year law student at Loyola University Chicago interested in criminal law, and interns at First Defense Legal Aid and the Westside Justice Center. He last wrote about a proposed ordinance that would require city evictions to have Just Cause.

MAY 13, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

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BUSINESS

Moving Past the Festivals Chicago’s SSAs struggle to support businesses unexpectedly closed

BY MALIK JACKSON

W

hile most of the world’s decisions are made in ivory towers and government chambers, the impacts of COVID-19 are seen and felt in our everyday environments: our homes, our hospitals, our storefronts. Inadequacies in federal funding and shortages of basic protective equipment are making the fight increasingly difficult for those on the front lines. Many of the mom-and-pop shops that anchor commercial corridors are at risk of going underwater due to a lack of revenue and an inability to cover costs.

Likewise, unemployment numbers are skyrocketing and dysfunction in the state’s employment security office is making it hard for individuals to stay afloat. As vulnerable populations scramble to acquire the financial aid that is available to them, Special Service Areas are considering ways to deploy their resources to solve both the social and economic challenges arising in their communities.

Special Service Areas are local tax districts that fund expanded services and programs along business corridors within the district. According to the city’s Department of Planning and Development, the objective of the SSA is to promote commercial and economic development initiatives.

There aren’t many limits on how they fulfill this mission. SSAs organize everything from farmers’ markets to additional snow removal on a neighborhood's main streets, and many SSAs have controversially contracted with private security firms for an added layer of corridor surveillance. Most commonly, SSAs devote chunks of their efforts to coordinating some of Chicago’s most prized events, like the Pride Parade (SSA #8), Lollapalooza (SSA #1), and the Silver Room Block Party (SSA #61). Due to

varying property values across the city, some SSAs are better funded than others, but what’s clear is that SSAs have the capacity (and autonomy) to fund both critical and trivial pursuits in the name of economic development.

Though Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Governor J.B. Pritzker have differing opinions on the fates of these popular summer festivals, some SSAs have already taken it upon themselves to pull the plug on their large-dollar events. SSA #42 in South Shore quickly opted to cancel its highly anticipated South Shore Summer Festival in order to find better uses for the money as the community fights COVID-19, which is disproportionately affecting South Shore.

The SSA has recently come under scrutiny for its financial mismanagement of last year’s event, where Robin Thicke brought out thousands of residents on a Sunday evening. With the cancellation of the Summer Festival, the SSA moved swiftly to request proposals for the use of over $120,000 in newly available funds to aid the community’s fight against the pandemic.

In an April 8 meeting, several proposals were presented by SSA commissioners, business owners, and 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston. The proposals ranged from providing meals and groceries for vulnerable populations to creating platforms for nonessential businesses to make sales and generate revenue. The chasm is between issuing funds for the sole intent of protecting nonessential businesses and their employees, or crafting a program that would provide household necessities to residents. It’s hard to make an argument for “best use” of funds when each proposal would provide direly needed aid to at least some demographics within the community, but given the

SSA’s purpose of generating commercial and economic development, there is a philosophical challenge presenting itself throughout this process. In the same way that coronavirus has challenged the entire world to innovate in its daily operations— forcing professional services to work behind a webcam, universities to consider e-degrees, and the entire globe to redefine “essential”— it has also created circumstances where governing bodies are called to reimagine their roles and responsibilities. Is the SSA’s responsibility to aid its commercial partners, or the residents of the community?

To understand Special Service Areas, it’s important to understand how they’re funded and the different entities they’re tied to. In order to create an SSA, a service provider (typically a chamber of commerce or other nonprofit business association) conducts a feasibility study for the desired area and applies to the Department of Planning and Development to begin the process of establishing an SSA. After being approved to proceed, the service provider is tasked with forming an advisory committee, and the two entities work with a consultant to formulate a plan and collect data to complete the remaining application documents. This process includes organizing community meetings, creating a budget, collecting signatures from taxpayers, and

seeking approval from City Council, but the details of this process reveal who SSA stakeholders are and exactly who the SSA is beholden to.

Special Service Areas are funded by a property tax levy on commercial properties within their boundaries. This means that a portion of the taxes that business owners and landlords pay are allocated to the budget of the SSA; tenants of commercially-zoned properties in the district might see higher rents as a result of this additional tax levy.

This budget is typically agreed upon by stakeholders every fiscal year, and in return the businesses that pay into the SSA become subcontractors and benefit from SSA services, while providing their services for programs such as the South Shore Summer Festival.

This funding structure, which in many ways defines the obligation of Special Service Areas, is what makes this particular moment challenging for SSA #42. While economic development is an important driver for the health of a community, direct aid to residents is not exactly within the purview of the SSA. And in a pandemic that will undoubtedly lead to shuttered businesses and emptied commercial corridors, some commissioners want to stick to their guns and support businesses, particularly the ones that have had to cease operations, while other commissioners have proposed programs that will have a greater benefit to the general public. SSA #42 is looking to do both, as the commissioners have just approved a proposal from the South Shore Chamber that would provide $3,000 grants to ten businesses in the district, and another proposal that would supply the main grocery store in the community, Local Market, with funds to build out a grocery delivery service.

Throughout the process, SSA #42 Chairman Jared Lewis has said the commission is placing importance on being guided by the goals of the commission and using data to make cost-effective decisions.

He cites the original intent of the SSA program, saying, “the people best positioned to know how to develop their

“As a taxpayer-funded entity tasked with generating commercial and economic development, no SSA has the same make-up.”

MAY 13, 2020 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

BUSINESS

communities...is the community.”

However, Lewis also said the ability of an SSA to make good policy is based on its ability to draw from “objective facts.”

At every level of government right now, datasheets are being crunched and analyzed to measure the impacts of COVID-19 and subsequent policy responses. Likewise, SSA #42 and its service provider, the South Shore Chamber, are trying their best to collect data on their community partners to understand the damage being done to their corridors—but a lot of things are unknown.

What is known is that businesses deemed nonessential have been forced to close down and cease sales, leaving them vulnerable to missed payments and permanent closures. Lewis’s proposal would have filled one known gap: he proposed creating an online platform for nonessential businesses in South Shore to sell their products, supported by a marketing campaign, also proposed. There weren’t many barriers to realizing this plan, and the expenses were minimal. The proposal also falls in line with the duty of the SSA to support businesses in the district.

This is where philosophies differ: other proposals were tailored more toward providing direct aid to as many residents as possible. Operating on similar data, these proposals are specifically geared toward residents who may have lost their jobs, elderly residents with limited mobility, or frontline workers who are short on time and peace of mind. Fifth Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston proposed a collaboration between the SSA and the community’s restaurants to provide meals for first responders and health care workers, an effort that she estimated would cost $30,000. Another proposal, which was adopted, devotes another $33,000 to develop a grocery delivery service for community residents, an effort that would entail a partnership with the new Local Market, and a potential fund-matching opportunity for banks in the community.

The latter proposals, however, while long on budget allocation, were short on logistics.

For the grocery delivery service, presumably powered by Instacart, many questions remain on how to build such a program, how to raise awareness and administer it, and how to make sure it's equitably distributed.

Programs like that one are considerably more resource-intensive than that of Lewis’s or Ra’Oof Saleem’s (who proposed a social media marketing campaign for the community’s businesses and services), and their justification is derived from equivocal 22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 13, 2020

assumptions that ought to be investigated before being acted upon.

All of these plans have a clear public benefit, and the debate that commissioners are engaging in is healthy nonetheless.

Critical discussion like this is necessary to craft and execute effective programs, and discussion wouldn’t be possible without the cancellation of the Summer Festival.

Now that it’s back to the drawing board for the use of these funds, SSA #42 is being challenged to reimagine what those funds could instead be used for in the future.

As of late, some commissioners of the SSA have begun to question whether the Summer Festival is actually generating the economic development that the SSA is tasked with cultivating. In fact, earlier this year was the first time that the SSA has ever put out a request for proposal in order to evaluate alternatives to the festival.

Former chairman and current commissioner Amena Karim has long been an advocate for rethinking the effectiveness of the festival, saying that it doesn’t generate the level of business activation that it would if it were located along the commercial corridors of the community as opposed to its current site, the South Shore Cultural Center. Commissioner Karim cited several alternatives to a one-time festival, mentioning farmers’ markets and smaller street festivals. She was also a pioneer of the 2017 Connect South Shore Arts Festival, a partnership between SSA #42 and Hyde Park’s Silver Room and Connect Gallery.

Connect South Shore was a weekend-long festival with events ranging from wellness workshops to film screenings and music performances. The mix of activities and the use of multiple vendors along the 71st Street corridor served as an ideal activation of both community and commercial stakeholders.

Efforts like these are what she considers more “optimal, revenue-generating” uses of SSA dollars, but one thing remains challenging in crafting programs and measuring impact—data.

Lewis, also a second-year master’s student at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, is privy to the importance of evidence-based policymaking.

Not fully for or against large events like the Summer Festival, he does believe that there needs to be a more intelligent and robust infrastructure upon which the SSA operates in order to measure the impact of initiatives.

As a taxpayer-funded entity tasked with generating commercial and economic development, no SSA has the same make-

MELL MONTEZUMA

up. SSA #42 is quite different from SSA #1 in the Loop, and it’s not too similar to SSA #61 in neighboring Hyde Park. With thirty-one percent of its residents living below the poverty line and largely vacant commercial corridors, it’s important for SSA #42’s dollars to go a long way, and the best investments are made based on data.

Lewis suggests that a collaborative effort between the SSA and the Department of Planning and Development to collect neighborhood-specific data beyond the census would be useful for an entity like the SSA. As SSA #42 rethinks its uses during this crisis, acquiring these resources will be top of mind when the pandemic is over.

In a funding landscape as disconnected as the one we’re seeing implemented on federal, state, and local levels, it’s fortunate that entities like Special Service Areas exist. Issues that commonly arise with large departments allocating funds to smaller jurisdictions are dollars occasionally not reaching the most vulnerable, not meeting every need if they do reach the most vulnerable, or not reaching anyone at all.

But Special Service Areas have the context

to ensure that less-visible variables within the community can be solved for. While Special Service Areas are susceptible to politics, and sometimes misrepresentative of the community, one would hope that in a time of crisis, these symptoms are not a deterrent from doing what’s best for their communities as a whole. In the case of SSA #42, $120,000 that would’ve previously gone toward the South Shore Summer Festival is now a part of a checkbook with the intended purpose of fortifying one of the last majority-minority neighborhoods on the lakefront. What they’ll do with it is up to them; there are judicious ways they can go about it, and more imprudent ways. But what’s surely on the minds of the commissioners of SSA #42 is how these dollars can be spent in the future, and the resources they’ll need in order to make a real impact. Malik Jackson is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in Urban Studies and Planning.

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